D2957

These two Ruston & Hornsby 165DM 0-4-0DM shunters were built in 1956 for British Railways. They are similar to PWM650, but with four wheels. Powered by a Ruston 6VPHL engine, they were numbered 11507-8 and painted in the standard black livery. Working mainly in the Stratford area of London, they were later painted in green livery with yellow ends and wasps stripes. They were renumbered D2957-8. They were withdrawn in 1967, with one being scrapped and the other sold for industrial use.

My model is built from a Judith Edge Kit and follows Michaels usual method of separate chassis, footplate and body. One slight difference with this kit is that the cab roof is secured to the body after painting and glazing, as there is no access to the cab through the floor as on other Judith Edge kits.

Body assembled and almost conplete

Construction is very straightforward and again, I used my Poppy's Woodtech Jig to assemble a square chassis. The model is powered by a Mashima 1020 can motor driving through a High Level Kits Roadrunner gearbox with a ratio of 60:1. The wheels are 13mm diameter supplied by Scalelink. As these have plastic insulated centres, they are ideal for my use with DCC in avoiding a live chassis. They are very similar to the Romford versions and use the same axles and crankpins.

Body primed

The buffers are Gibson 4914's, which are the large 2ft. diameter industrial type. These are slightly over large as the Ruston type are 22 inches. The photographs above do not show the air tanks fitted under the footplate. The reason for this is that there is rather a tight clearance and I have left these off until the chassis is complete. Once the chassis is complete, I can test fit and fettle the tanks as necessary.

I decided to paint the model in BR Green with Wasp Stripes. Halfords Rover Brooklands Green was used for the main body colour with Halfords Vauxhall Mustard Yellow for the ends and Halfords Volkswagon Mars Red for the buffer beam. The roof was sprayed with Halfords Grey Plastic Bumper paint. The transfers are all from Fox Transfers. Details were picked out as necessary. When dry, the model was given a coat of Phoenix Precision Satin varnish.

There isn't any cab detailing supplied with the kit, so I fashioned a rudimentary control desk and fitted a working LED cab light. The cab interior was painted then glazed.

My intention was to fit my favoured Digitrax DZ126 decoder in the model, but they were unavailable at the time. Instead, I thought I would try the LaisDCC N/Z gauge 2 function decoder. This is very small and fitted easily under the motor. The chip was reprogrammed so that the cab light worked off f1 in both directions.

All in all, a nice little model that runs well.